I had a rather slow last night in Dalat, did a walk along the river, where I stumbled upon another waterfall/theme park, although it seemed abandoned and it was free. The small waterfall had water that ran through the city going down it, so the pool at the bottom was extremely polluted, with a tick layer of yellow nasty foam covering it all. After that, went out for some drinks by myself, then met up with Pam, Eric and Lindsay to do her birthday cake thing, lighting the candles then blowing them out. That didn't last long, and went to bed early.
Took the morning bus to Mui Ne the next day, a popular beach town four hours south of Dalat. The whole area essentially is a string of hotels and restaurants along one road next to the beach. This "strip" is about five miles long, so I got in some good amount of walking, going from hotel to hotel looking for the best one. I settled on the Hoang Kim Golden, but kinda wished I went with the Natalie House, which was cheaper and nicer. It did turn out that the Hoang Kim helped me out a lot with services the Natalie House may not have had. I got my bus to Saigon there (which I am currently on) as well as a cheap motor bike. I've been in Vietnam for about a month, and I finally got my first set of wheels, which took a full day of slow-driving pants-shitting down the street before I got back the hang of it from last time I was here. Another thing the Hoang Kim helped with was with me getting money. Being low on cash, I went to the ATM only to find out my card had just expired. It was so stupid on my part too, since I remember checking the expiration dates for my credit cards, but not my ATM. The Hoang Kim recommended a place that let me charge my credit card as a purchase, and then give me cash for a reasonable fee. Kinda saved my ass, since I'd be stuck there still trying to earn enough cash for my hotel by offering motorbike rides and picture taking to tourists
So, I came to Mui Ne for one reason, and one reason only: to ride a motherfuckin' osterich. Seems like a long way to go for something so silly, but you have to understand this weird obsession I have of riding bizarre animals. Dana (Ben's cousin) told me about the osterich rides, which are at the start of the Fairy Stream, and I immediatly found the reason for my entire trip to Asia. The Fairy Stream is essentially a shallow stream of water that runs through these amazing sand dunes. It's actually really pretty (but somewhat dirty, though clean by Vietnamese standards I guess), and ends at a waterfall. The osterich rides are in this small coral at the start of it. I'm usually against all the tourist traps that involve animals, especially in the third world. However, these motherfuckin' osteriches looked like they were in good shape, and fuck it, it's riding a motherfuckin' osterich that we're talking here. A $1.50 gets you about a 60 second ride around the coral, and the guy running it took a bunch of pictures on my camera. Can't wait to post.
Mui Ne is a really nice place. The town of Mui Ne itself is east of the strip of hotels, and its where all the waiters and hotel staff live presumably. Because of that, the "strip" is devoid of any restaurants and cafes not 100% devoted to tourists. Usually, tourist restaurants are not nearly as good as the local dives, and in Vietnam I've found that the more run-down the place, the better the food. Food here wasn't bad though, I found this amazing outdoor saefood dive called Thanh Oanh, among a whole line of similar outdoor seafood grill joints overlooking the beach, on the eastern part of the Mui Ne strip. Among other things, I had these awesome grilled clams that were just the awesome, for 75 cents. They said something about live - or even raw - lobster and giant prawns that they had swimming on display, but that was really expensive. Maybe next time.
While the beaches at Mui Ne are the nicest I've seen in Vietnam to date, it seems that something got messed up when they were building all the hotels on the strip. It seems as if a lot of the buildings were built too close to the water or something, an effect the Lonely Planet guide attributed to beach erosion. The Mui Ne "strip" is essentially divided into two distinct parts, one with the sandy beaches, and the one with the concrete. The eastern part is where the less expensive hotels are, but they are all raised on concrete slabs. This creates this kind of concrete wall along the beach, and in many cases, this wall is sloped to give it the impression of a seamless continuation into the sand. At low tide, there is actually a narrow bit of sand between this concrete and the water, which you walk down and hang out. But at hight tide, the water comes up to the wall, up to a couple feet. There is a clear border between this area, and the western end of the strip, where apperently the more expensive hotels can afford to pay for beach restoration. Here, during low tide, the beaches are much wider, and presumably are still sandy at high tide, since the hotels are not raised, and there are no concrete walls.
At night, I ventured out to Joe's Cafe, which advertised live music. The place was really cool, and it seemed to be owned by this European guy who was helping his staff. The live music was a Vietnamese guy in a fedora and acoustic guitar doing old Western pop songs. I had lunch there the next day, which was really good too. That night, I had to stick to two beers at Joe's, since I had to ride my motorbike home. After that, I got to my hotel, parked my bike, and walked to Pogo, a nearby bar. Not as atmospheric, but definitely more boistrous, I endxed up meeting a bunch of people there. I first talked to this guy Jeremy from just outside Oakland, who helped set up a neurology clinic in Cambodia, and is now travelling with some Canadian girl he met out there. I met a Russian dude I think named Dziejnev, who has been travelling from Moscow by land, just looking for stuff to do. He had a travel buddy with him too, this guy Thomas, from Paris.
Later, I met this guy Mike from Montana, who has been teaching English abroad in various countries for the past five years. He had just met these three random people travelling together, and we all ended up hanging out. There was this German girl whose name I forgot, this seriously Shane McGowan-looking Irish guy named Ian, and this cute Australian girl named Julie. We played a little pool and talked a lot, and me, Mike and Julie even tried to go for a late night swim in the ocean at my hotel, but it was kinda ruinded by Ian who was absolutely hammered, yet insisted he come along. At my hotel, since it was high tide, beach access consisted stairs that went down from Hotel essentially straight into several feet of ocean water, and the idea was, we'd just swim from there. No way in hell Ian was going into that and coming back alive, so Julie said she had to take him home, and the whole thing fizzled. Looking back, this may have been a good thing, since we were all a little drunk too.
Next morning, I got up early and walked from my hotel along the beach. I walked to the nicer western part about two miles away. Had to haul ass back, as tide was coming up, didn't want to have to swim back. After that, I took my motorbike out for a ride, driving along the ocean. I was much more confident on it today, letting me enjoy the ride. After checking out of my hotel, I boarded a sleeper bus, and will get to Saigon hopefully soon.
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